It was only last Sunday when Claudia and I saw our first flock of geese. By Wednesday the skies were filled with myriad waterfowl, a good sign that spring is almost here.

Spring offically arrives at 1:32 pm Saturday, March 20th, but thousands of geese can't be wrong. If their arrival signals an early spring, it's okay with me. 

Most of these photos are scenic Alaska shots, while others depict a way of life totally foreign to the rest of North America. Taking pictures proved far easier than prospecting for gold! 

Pioneer Peak

Maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, itching to see a robin, or the first flock of geese in migratory formation.  Whatever the reason, I thought it a good time to pass along these photos taken by Mark Stryker of Alexander.  With the exception of the Scrub Jay pictured above, these photos were taken last summer near his Alexander home.

House Finch, Goldfinch in left bottom corner

After entering Mike Hilchey’s town of Elba home, the first thing that caught my eye was the number of fishing rods lining the wall. Turning to hand him my jacket, I saw the glass covered display cases full of vintage spoons and spinners. And that’s just inside the entranceway.   

As Mike leads Claudia and me through a narrow hall, we see a few paintings on the wall, mostly waterfowl, including one signature Roy Mason watercolor. Entering the den was like stepping back in time five, six, seven decades and more. Here was the treasure trove of vintage fishing lures: hand-carved wooden lures with glass eyes, bronze spinners, deer hair frogs & mice for the fly-fishermen, even a tiny Redeye Wiggler made for the fly-rod. And that barely scratches the surface of his collection.  

There’s a good story behind many of the lures in my old tackle box. Such is the case with the wobbling spoon pictured above. Called a Red-eyed Wiggler, it was at one time manufactured by the Hofschneider Tackle Co. in Rochester, N.Y. I was twelve years old on the day I made a mental note to purchase one. And I doubt I ever clipped it to my line without thinking of two former Batavians who, back in the day, were virtually inseparable. You see, they were the reason I went out and bought a “wiggler”. Before I tell you about them, I first need to fast forward a few years.

I was an up and coming northern pike fisherman on the day I walked into Barrett’s Batavia Marine to see the late Paul Levins. I wanted Paul to show me how to make a slip-bobber rig for catching northerns. I was strolling between used gun rack and the counter when I heard Paul’s voice from the back of the store.  “That’s a nice pike,” he said.

It was a nice pike, big as any I’d seen up to that time. Having seen the fish, I walked right into the mix, immediately asking “Where’d ya catch it?” The proud angler was from the east end of town, I had seen him around, but didn’t know him personally. “Under the Jackson Street Bridge,” he replied.  It wasn’t long before I learned the pike in question wasn’t caught at said locale. As is common practice among anglers, I don’t blame him for trying to keep his hotspot a secret.

What’s more, at the time the fibber’s account made perfect sense to me. The reason being, it had only been a few years earlier that I was standing atop the old Lehigh Railroad Bridge – which was adjacent the South Jackson St. Bridge - when I saw a rowboat passing below. In it were the aforementioned pals who grew up on Batavia’s southside. Pat Pullinzi was doing the rowing while Mike Lovria tended to his fishing gear.

That’s Tim Sawyer  rerigging his fishing gear. Minutes earlier, something inhaled the Spin ‘N Glo tied to the end of his line and raced downstream a ways before breaking water. When the  fish breached the surface, we saw that it was a big king salmon, tinted red with age, and boy, did it launch itself out of the water. It didn’t flop about, but rather had its body perfectly parallel to the river surface, high above the water and facing downstream. Kind of looked like a big muscle with fins - then it crashed back into the river and kept going. The fish had no doubt spawned in this same stream, spent the next 4-5 years at sea gorging itself on anchovies and the like. Its biological clock said it was time to return to the place of its origin and procreate. Chasing down Tim’s lure had put a temporary halt to those plans. The fish made one long run and the battle was at a standstill. The line was still taught, but there was no movement. The big fish had wrapped the line around submerged brush before continuing on its way.

The spring of 1997 had been quite damp in Batavia, gloomy even by Western New York standards. Still, I was surprised to get my first tan of the year inside the Arctic Circle. Not to be confused with the polar ice cap at its northern extreme, much of the Arctic Circle is full of lush growth, crystal-clear rivers, mountains and, during the month of June, 24 hours of sunlight. During our stay the sun was visible 24 hours. Each morning, between midnight and one a.m., the sun would skim the horizon before once again beginning its ascent. 

Through the courtesy of Lester and John Lines, the owners & operators of the Aurora Mining Company, Tim Sawyer and I had set up our camp on Harrison Creek in the East Crazy Mountains of east-central Alaska.

This being grizzly country, we armed ourselves accordingly, carrying a high powered rifle and a .44 magnum wherever we went. A couple weeks before our arrival, seven grizzlies had been spotted ambling down the grassy slope of Mastodon Dome (so called for the prehistoric remains once unearthed on the site). All seven bears eventually made their way to the Lines’ camp, passing through without incident. An avid hunter, Tim had seen the big bears up close, the previous year taking a grizzly measuring nearly nine feet.  

The seven hour flight was nearly at an end, and only then did I bother to look out the window. Looking down I noticed the glare of the sun, reflected off the snow and ice-capped peaks of the Wrangell Mountains. It was 10:30 pm. I wouldn’t experience darkness again for a month.

Monday is the Winter Solstice, officially the first day of winter and  the shortest day of the year. With three months (at least) of snow, wind and ice in the offing, I'd like to take one last look at autumn, and some of the locales Claudia and I canoed, hiked and cruised along the back roads. 

Though I once fished the little stream in my early years, I never knew it had a name. Not long after we moved to Creek Road, a former neighbor, the late Anthony Torcello, told me it was called Celery Brook. It seems that back in the day, the White Swamp – where the stream originates- was once drained and used to grow celery.

It was 7:10 a.m. this morning when the high-pitched honking was audible several moments before they came into view. Finally, they appeared, coming out of the northeast, each group nothing more than a dark slit in the overcast gray. It was one of those vast throngs of Canada’s that spread across the sky. Along the southern edge of the flock were smaller fowl, their wingbeats much faster than that of the geese. They were ducks, and the scene reminded me of a squadron of fighters accompanying much larger bombers.

Despite the size of the flock, they were flying too low to be migrating. I’m guessing they came from the Sandwash, only a couple miles distant. The flock on the Cedar Street quarry has more than doubled in the past month.

They’ve been staging for weeks now. Huge flocks of geese, Canada’s making their stopover on local waterways and impoundments. In recent weeks they’ve been dropping into freshly cut corn fields in vast numbers. Great rafts of honkers sitting on Lake Ontario have been taking advantage of the spillage in the massive grain fields in Orleans County. There seems to be a great number of geese still on hand throughout the region, indicative of the weather. I hope the trend continues.   

The afternoon began with a lengthy canoe ride and troublesome wind gusts - and the wind was at our back. The return trip promised to be a real hoot.

We were in a wetland measuring nearly a square mile, a cattail jungle dotted with potholes – all of which held and incredible number of ducks. We took no guns along, no cumbersome bags of decoys and no retriever. With the opening day of ducks season two days away, we were scouting, searching for the ideal location - a thick stand of cattails to conceal the canoe from incoming waterfowl.  

On this day the tops of the cattails were bent over by the stiff wind and yet myriad waterfowl were having little difficulty negotiating the elements. Ducks were vacating the potholes in great numbers. By the time we left they had easily number into the thousands. While countless numbers took wing, many came zeroing in to our location. Once realizing their mistake, they applied the brakes, at the same time quickly scrambling to gain altitude. 

Having a prior commitment, I knew I wouldn’t be back on opening day. Not that it mattered. Two   hours spent amid the marshy environs had been reminiscent of a waterfowler’s bygone era. An that was fine by me.

It’s been an enjoyable autumn on many fronts and there is much to give thanks for. There were a handful of goose hunts, at least one memorable bowhunt, a few scenic canoe rides, and the chance to wet a line on two occasions. And I managed to take in at least one high school football game each weekend. But the scene that readily comes to mind is that of a gray October afternoon when an overcast sky turned the surface of the potholes black, the tops of the cattails bending in the wind and countless ducks on the wing. I felt like we had paddled back in time, right onto the cover of a 1950’s Outdoor Life magazine.  Happy Thanksgiving!

It's that time of year when retrievers tend to shine, really making their owners proud. After considerable time invested in training, many a Lab’s owner will now savor the moment as their charge leaps from the cattail blind or camouflaged duck boat in pursuit of downed waterfowl, or maybe work the swale for upland game. Yet many a Lab isn’t trained to perform in the woods, fields or swamps – they are simply family pets and good companions. Such is the life of “Hurricane,” one of three Labs owned by the Kehlenbeck family of Alabama. And while not your conventional Lab, Hurricane possesses many character traits for which Labrador retrievers are noted.  

Attentive and focused......

though not always!

Always happy when getting attention.

Stately in appearance.......

and noble-looking.

but most of all, they're good friends.

The above photo depicts Oak Orchard Creek little more than a quarter-mile upstream of Lake Ontario. From the creek mouth to Waterport dam, this is a much wider stretch of stream with a more diverse fishery than found upstream. But on this day, with the exception of few bumps at the end of the line, neither the trout nor salmon were willing to cooperate.

I never know what I might come across while driving the back roads.  Take this morning for instance, when I saw a standardbred race horse swimming in a horseshoe-shaped pond.

Joe Lawrence is on a roll. Last year he closed out the deer season with a monster whitetail scoring 144 on the Boone & Crockett scoring system and placing him high in the New York State Big Buck Club’s muzzleloader division. (The Batavian, Dec. 20, 2008 – Father & Son Memories). On Saturday, the opening day of archery season in New York’s southern zone, the elder Lawrence did it again. He began his fortieth bow season by taking another massive whitetail that is all but certain to make the NYS record book. The big buck sported ten points and weighed a whopping 202 lbs. field dressed.

It was late afternoon when the buck appeared, already displaying rutting tendencies by chasing after four does.  “I used a grunt to call to turn him, and he stopped and looked in my direction,” Joe said. “I hit the grunt call again and he came right to me.” He made the shot from a tree stand at a distance of fifteen yards. 

Award plaques on display at the Blue Devil Hall of Fame Banquet.

Hall of Fame Inductees include from left to right bottom row;  Joe Fiannaca, Nancy Platt, Ed Dawson.  Top row left to right;  Paul Sherwood, Tom Briggs, Tony Miceli, Pat Woodring.

In attendance were the Bosseler brothers, Bill and George who were selected to the first Blue Devils Hall of Fame induction in 2002.

Also on hand to celebrate the inductees selection was this contingent of 1960's Notre Dame Fighting Irish; left to right, Ron Francis, Bill Sutherland, Jim Fanara, and Bayne Johnson.

Carrie Panek oversees the pumpkin harvest on the Panek Farm.

Cut and ready for loading.

One of many wagon loads.

Waiting for a home...

Snow geese mingling with Canadas

A closer look at the "snows"

Vultures take flight

Get ready...

Here they come

Calling 'em in

Fetch 'em up!